As Beyonce's revealing swimwear ads get repeatedly 'censored' at one New York
bus stop, Katy Brand suggests the singer's body is, well, too
bootylicious for some.

Is anyone fed up with discussing Beyoncé’s body yet? No? Ok, let’s carry on for a bit then. After all, it is a very good body, like a striking piece of great architecture – the Guggenheim, say, or Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona, or the Olympic aquatic centre – and so it will continue to be a source of endless fascination for us mere mortals until some undefined point in the far distant future. It probably even has a visitors’ centre and gift shop by now.

And so the latest on the Body Bootylicious HQ is that New Yorkers do not like seeing it in all its glory, barely covered by a bikini, as they wait for the bus to work. In her much publicised collaboration with H&M, Beyoncé wore several swimming costumes she had a hand (or bottom) in designing for a series of poster ad-campaigns. She looks very good in them too (no surprises there).

But it seems that as lovely and golden and athletic as Queen B is, sometimes it is just a little too early in the morning to have your own insecurities handed to you on a plate. You just want to get to the office without worrying about how you look naked and how you may compare to the world’s most powerful (and toned) pop star. If you are Basingstoke Magistrates Court, you don’t necessarily need to be reminded that you are not the Guggenheim every time you leave the house.

So a protest has begun. At one bus stop in particular, the image of Mrs Carter in a small, Aztec print two-piece is falling victim to guerrilla censorship on a daily basis. A white sheet appears every morning, stuck over her lower half. By the evening it has been removed, only to be replaced by another the following morning. Having always been led to believe that New York was the most unshockable city on earth, home to millions of sophisticates that wouldn’t turn a hair if their own grandmothers walked past them in the nude, it isinteresting that this little protest is bubbling upthere.

I can sympathise. I remember driving down a main road in Liverpool one afternoon and being confronted by a billboard of a lingerie model posing provocatively in some very revealing, flesh coloured lacy underwear, one finger in her mouth and the other, well, I don’t like to pry. The billboard was enormous – it jutted out over the pavement and part of the road. It was unavoidable, you had to stare at it. It made you think about sex immediately, whether you liked it or not – it made you lose whatever interesting train of thought you happened to be on at that time, and I have to say, I objected. It is not necessary to produce an advert that overt in order to sell knickers – everybody needs knickers, they will be bought. And I wondered too who it was aimed at? The women buying the knickers, or the men who don’t even notice them once they actually get a real, live woman in a bedroom scenario? I found it off-putting and in fact, it made me feel negative about the shop that had produced such an advert, which surely was not the intention.

Similarly, I wasn't a fan of the billboard ads which went up around London which simply carry the word ‘PUSSY’ in giant capital letters, along with a tiny, lame little joke underneath along the lines of it being the reader with the dirty mind as it is only referring to the feline variety. I first encountered one (the billboard that is, not a pussy) as I was dropped off by a male driver I had never met before, at 5.30am, in a disused brewery car park for a day of intense filming. We both saw it. It was awkward.

It brought a rough, vulgar sort of awareness of sex into the space we were sharing, and why? I don’t even know what it was advertising. I didn’t want to know, but found out later it was for an energy drink. Theadvert was bannedfollowing over 100 complaints that the campaign was unsuitable for kids. I will never, ever, as a point of principle, buy the product. I will shut up when I see a huge billboard saying ‘COCK’, along with *innocent face* protestations that a male chicken was all that was being referred to, in the same location. Until that day, I am officially, prudishly annoyed.

The Pussydrinks website still has this image on its homepage

So, I can understand why someone is pinning that sheet over Beyoncé every day. It is just a gesture to say that it is tiresome to have these sexed-up images shoved at us all the time, with no respite. Sex is great. Beyoncé is great. The bikini look's great. But not all the time. And not every time you get on the bus.